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Wan Chai, Hong Kong

A report on Wan Chai nightlife to prepare first time visitors for the pitfalls and overall feel of the place

Thanks to Paul for this submission, a veteran of many trips to Hong Kong on his travels between Europe and Australasia.

See also: Prostitution in Wan Chai and Wan Chai's Bar Girls and Freelancers

This article contains references to the sex industry in Wan Chai but is not intended to be a sex trip report. It is simply to make first time visitors to Hong Kong aware of how things work in the entertainment districts so you will be armed and ready to avoid the dangers and pitfalls that the naive first time visitor can fall into. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

Like many destinations in Asia, Hong Kong has its fair share of seedy nightlife. However, it's not just restricted to red light areas and spills over into more mainstream entertainment venues. Hong Kong is a very safe city, be in no doubt about that and while you should take all the usual precautions to protect yourself and your belongings, you should not worry too much and relax.

By far, the most well known entertainment areas for foreigners and expats are two areas on Hong Kong Island called Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai. While there are many entertainment areas in Hong Kong, they deserve their own page, so for the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on Wan Chai. Situated just a short distance from Hong Kong's Central district (the main business and finance hub), Wan Chai covers a fairly large area and comprises different zones with the bar and entertainment part of it concentrated on a few streets adjacent to the immigration tower, the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre and Central Plaza (unmistakable triangular building, once the tallest in Hong Kong) Several embassies can be found here, including those of New Zealand and Australia.

There are some drinking holes in Wan Chai that are very well known to expatriates as meeting places, such as The Old China Hand, a small pub style bar on Lockhart Road, nestled amongst a strip of gogo bars. The intersection of Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road and Luard Road mark the hub of Wan Chai's nightlife activity with an array of clean cut theme bars, invariably with Filipino live acts, to more seedy establishments, where scantily clad girls will stand outside and try to coerce passers by inside for a very expensive drink and pole dancing show.

You may think to yourself that the girls outside these gogo bars don't look very Chinese. Well, you'd probably be right as women from other Southeast Asian countries are trafficked into Hong Kong to work in the sex industry, usually from Thailand and The Philippines but also form other places like Vietnam and Indonesia. Not only that, many migrant workers in the domestic helper industry on very low wages will often find themselves tempted into prostitution to supplement their income.

Wan Chai can get very busy and you may struggle to find a place at the bar during weekends. It didn't take long for Hong Kong to recover from the economic hardships caused by the SARS incident. In contrast, the seedier bars on Lockhart Road are nearly always low on custom. There is a very good reason for this and that is the cost of enjoying a drink in such a bar. No sooner have you chosen a place to sit down, you will be swarmed by a nearly naked and very tactile girl asking you for a drink. This will likely set you back two of three hundred Hong Kong Dollars, or more. If you are tempted to pay the early release fee to take the girl out of the bar with you, you better have a substantial budget as you will likely be relieved of two thousand Hong Kong Dollars upwards. The red light bars of Hong Kong are only for the wealthy and are probably not worth the money.

There are a handful of discotheques around this part of Wan Chai, such as The New Makati (above the Old China Hand), Neptune 2 (Jaffe Road) and a handful on Luard Road near a 7-11 store. The official cover charge is not usually enforced and you can enter for free. These are ordinary discos and not intended to be places to meet prostitutes. However, the reality is that there are always plenty of single girls to be found in these nightclubs because they are supplied with free drinks by the bar staff while they are waiting for a client to come along. If a customer decides to buy one of these freelancing girls a drink, you can be almost certain that they are secretly being paid a commission for that drink from the bar. Drinks in discos cost around forty to seventy Hong Kong Dollars, including draft and bottled beer. If you are drinking alone and a woman approaches you with a suggestion you leave together, expected to be one to two thousand Hong Kong Dollars lighter by the end of the evening. However, don't assume all the girls you will meet in discos are working. You may inadvertently insult someone who's just out for fun with her friends.
Again, the mix of nationalities is mainland Chinese, Thai, Filipino domestic workers on a night out, Vietnamese and Indonesian.

You shouldn't think that Wan Chai is only a place to go if you're looking for naughty nightlife because it's not. There are some great fun bars to spend the night and enjoy a few beers with both expats and locals. You may want to avoid the area if there are any American soldiers on shore leave though. It is also a major shopping and business district, almost and extension of the shopper's paradise that is Causeway Bay, just a few blocks further on.

If you are on a short visit to Hong Kong, Wan Chai is a good choice as a base due to it's concentration of hotels, restaurants and nightlife that will keep you entertained during your stay, whether you're looking for a night out with friends or traveling solo. It is also very well served by public transport, making other parts of Hong Kong easy to reach and making Wan Chai easy to find if you're staying in another area. Not only that, the Wan Chai Star Ferry pier is a short walk, making it a breeze to get to the Kowloon side of the harbor and affording you stunning views of the city. Hong Kong can be a very expensive city but with a little caution and moderation, you won't break the bank.

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